Phantom Limb
by vikung-fu
Summary: Post-episode 35, pre-41, Sougo and Geiz find themselves confronted by a Heisei Rider from 1995 unnumbered amongst the 19 that Oma Zi-o has claimed! What is the secret of this new Another Rider in blackened armour? What startling new technique must Zi-o master to defeat it? K for mild gore - you guys like gore, right? :p Also: the faintest mention of Tsuora. Because it's a thing.


**Phantom Limb**

Strange RideWatch, he thought, frowning, feeling the weight of it in his palm, pausing a moment too long.

"_Too slow_!" Geiz roared as he sprinted forward, one arm at his back, his ax held before him.

Sougo stumbled forward, almost tripping over himself as the weight of Geiz's armoured shoulder slammed into his own and the RideWatch spilt into the air. Hastily, he reached up, failed to catch it properly, and juggled the small lump of plastic and metal between both hands before managing to get a grip on it.

"Luck-_y_," he muttered to himself, smiling broadly and looking down at it.

And yet slowly, his smile slipped into a frown.

Strange RideWatch, he thought once more.

Tsukuyomi had pushed the watch into his hand initially, and instructed him clearly, her face red and her expression flustered: _Here, use it_!

There was a slight film of sweat upon her forehead, her fringe damp and sitting unhappily above her eyes.

Where did you get this, he had asked her at the time, and she had looked ever more agitated and answered simply: _From Ora_.

The shape of it was normal, it was like any other watch they had used; black around the outside, an unfamiliar faceplate depicted at the centre, black and grey, swollen red eyes, stripes of yellow receding back from them, curving, assumedly, about the skull.

Strange RideWatch, he thought a third time, and shook his head.

He didn't like to admit it but some of them seemed indistinguishable to him. It wasn't until he loaded them into his belt that he sensed their difference. And there were so many as well! That he hadn't expected. When Geiz and Tsukuyomi had first arrived in his time, they told him that his future self, the tyrant, Oma Zi-o, had harnessed the power of nineteen Kamen Riders who had preceded him—so why then, were there so many other RideWatches? It frustrated him, and, if he was honest with himself, when he first had started on this path, he wasn't really interested in being a Kamen Rider or in any or sort of tradition that went with that; he was simply interested in being king.

Some of them, he thought, still looking down at the watch, he couldn't tell the difference between, and it was always a gamble when retrieving the Agito or Kuuga watch as to which power set he wasn't going to get. He tried to remember the difference of course, but really, all it came down to was that Kuuga was the red one and Agito was the gold one and their faces looked so similar on their watches that he wasn't at all confident he was ever picking the right one.

Strange Ridewatch.

Lifting his gaze from the face of the device, 18-year-old high schooler Tokiwa Sougo, his expression calm, his hazel hair unstirred by the wind, narrowed his eyes, watching as Geiz, resplendent in his rich red armour, turned the edge of his ax, the Zikan Zax, once more and slashed across the chest of his opponent, a stumbling, shambling creature labouring beneath an evil curse.

Almost human, almost organic, the creature was covered in numerous shifting tumours, burnt black with age and disease, blossoming in puss and black blood the consistency of tar. With every blow of Geiz's ax, the creature screeched out in some burbling, foreign tongue that Sougo couldn't comprehend or follow.

Carved into the creature's shoulder, as if with a blunt knife, were four digits, a year: _1995_.

He nodded to himself and straightened up, smiling amiably and then deciding to get serious. From his pocket, he pulled out the Zi-o watch, depressing the trigger and connecting it with his belt.

'_Zi-o_!' the belt declared.

"Henshin!" he shouted after, turning his arms in an arc.

He felt the waves of metal wash over his pink polo shirt, felt the other space open, time shifting to grant him access to the armour that would make him king, that would one day make him ruler of everything.

In the open slot on the right-hand side of the belt, he slid in the second RideWatch, the one Tsukuyomi had obtained via breathless means from the Timejacker, Ora.

'_Masked_!' the belt announced in its sonorous voice, and he reached down and spun the mechanism, a further set of armour manifesting from the void, black plates sliding into place across the surface of his own suit, his appearance momentarily resembling that of a sickly-strange grasshopper-man before coalescing into a new form, strengthened skin and taut muscle, a black veneer decorated with stripes of yellow and red, the lens of his helm turning blood red.

'_Armour time_!' bellowed the belt. '_Royal Edenoi! Masked_!'

"Rejoice!" a voice suddenly called out, and he lifted his head sharply to see Woz, old sorcerer of the devil king he feared he might one day become, standing atop a telegraph pole, book open before him, his scarf billowing in the wind.

"Rejoice!" Woz announced once more. "The one to inherit all Rider powers, the time king who will rule over the past and the future. And his name is—"

He stopped, smiling broadly as his eyes travelled down to regard the boy monarch.

"Kamen Rider Zi-O: Masked Armour! Princely heir to Edenoi and all its principalities!"

"A prince?" Sougo asked, thoughtfully, and then grinned beneath the mask. "Well, it's not quite a kingship, but I'll take it!"

"Zi-o, look _out_!" Geiz shouted loudly as his foe pulled sharply away from him and sprinted forward towards Sougo.

They had first encountered this weird, cancerous Another Rider in the present, its shape manifested by the schemes of Schwartz, his arms folded behind his back, his head held high, black hair back from his strong forehead. Sougo had no idea why it was that Ora had chosen to help Tsukuyomi, had no idea what it was that Tsukuyomi could offer the other girl that would cause her to betray her compatriots and fellow Timejackers, Schwartz and Uhr, but at this juncture, he was not complaining: whatever it took was whatever it took, and he was simply happy to put an end to the messy business. He had, after all, other things to consider, future royal edicts to compose and such.

"Rider _Punch_!" he said forcefully.

Effortlessly, his armoured gauntlet ploughed through the creature's chest in an eruption of puss and oozing blood.

The Another Rider stumbled, staggered, and then stopped face to face with Sougo, who remained still, arm outstretched. Slowly, the armour seemed to rot away, decomposing at an accelerated rate, and, from within the mass, a small furry creature, tufts of brown and white fur smeared thick with blood, dropped out of the mass, hitting the ground with a sickening thud and laying there, gurgling and drooling.

Indifferent to the ease with which he had won, Sougo disengaged his armour, watching it shrink away into the pocket dimension it originated from as Tsukuyomi rushed over and then stopped a good distance from it, careful not to stain her delicate white court shoes with the remaining gore that smouldered in the heat of day.

Moments later, they were joined by Geiz, likewise disengaging his armour, his expression sour and unpleasant, hidden slightly by the shadow cast by the towering Time Mazine in which they had arrived. Woz followed, seemingly gliding across the stone, looking over at the creature with distaste.

"W-What is it?" Tsukuyomi stammered.

"Don't know," Geiz answered gruffly. "Don't care."

With a sudden movement, he brought his foot down and dashed the creature's brains across the pavement, a fresh wash of blood and gore spreading out from the remnants of its head.

"Geiz!" Tsukuyomi chided, and then wrinkled her nose and turned away. "Oh, it smells."

Sougo nodded and likewise turned away as Woz gracefully took a step backwards.

"It smells really bad. Like eggs," Sougo remarked, holding his nose.

Only Geiz remained untouched by the smell, his expression as dark as any, his eyes staring intently at the rotting life at his feet. What would it mean, he asked himself, for the boy who would be king to obtain powers of other Riders beyond the stars.

Already they had encountered Kamen Rider Ginga, alongside a number of characters from possible futures; what would it mean if there were other extra-terrestrial Riders, others whom Sougo could claim the powers of, others whom he could use to shore up his position as the future emperor of endless time ahead.

As they others joked and laughed about the scent of the dead thing, Myokoin Geiz dwelt darkly on what the future held.


End file.
